A bill to direct the Secretary of the Interior to carry out a feasibility study on a selective water withdrawal system at Glen Canyon Dam, and for other purposes.

Plain-English Summary

This bill would require the Secretary of the Interior to study whether it's practical and worthwhile to install a selective water withdrawal system at Glen Canyon Dam, which is located on the Colorado River on the Arizona-Utah border. A selective withdrawal system would allow officials to pull water from different depths of Lake Powell (the reservoir behind the dam) rather than only from one fixed level. The study would examine the costs, benefits, and technical challenges of building such a system.

The reason this matters is that water temperature and quality vary significantly at different depths of a reservoir. Right now, water released from Glen Canyon Dam tends to come from a single depth, which can affect water temperature downstream. By choosing which depth to draw water from, managers could potentially release warmer or cooler water depending on what's needed — which can have important effects on the health of river ecosystems, fish populations, and downstream water users.

This bill would primarily affect federal water managers, downstream communities, farmers, and environmental interests along the Colorado River. States that depend on Colorado River water — including Arizona, Nevada, California, and others — could also be affected by how water is managed at this dam. Native American tribes and recreational users of Lake Powell and the Grand Canyon area may also have a stake in the outcome.

At this stage, the bill only directs a feasibility study — it does not approve or fund any actual construction. The findings of the study would inform whether such a system should actually be built in the future.